[HN Gopher] What remote work does to engineering productivity
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What remote work does to engineering productivity
Author : tonioab
Score : 49 points
Date : 2021-03-14 20:25 UTC (2 hours ago)
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| Disgardia wrote:
| I used to be alone, so being lonely is boosting my productivity,
| i can do whatever i want
| Shank wrote:
| I think there's always some skepticism that should be expressed
| around wild articles like this.
|
| At a core level, remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic is
| unlikely to mirror remote work outside of the pandemic. It's one
| thing if you choose to work remotely and if your company
| willingly embraces remote work. It's an entirely different beast
| if your company is forced to transition to remote work while
| stay-at-home orders keep everyone locked indoors with minimal
| activities to do outside of work.
|
| The pandemic is challenging for many people, including people
| like me, who are full time remote workers. It's a poor time to
| evaluate the productivity differences of remote versus non-remote
| workers.
|
| This article states:
|
| > Operational improvements -- like scientific experiments --
| shouldn't operate on guesses and hope. In our current mass
| experiment of remote work, we should form hypotheses, act
| deliberately, and measure results.
|
| One of the most critical things you must consider when designing
| an experiment is confounding variables. COVID-19 didn't just
| shift people to remote work. It created a lot of stress, anxiety,
| and changed society dramatically in more ways than simply moving
| people's office locations. It cannot be ignored in judging the
| efficacy of remote work as a subject.
| [deleted]
| sokoloff wrote:
| It added some and also removed some of the possible
| distractions from remote work.
|
| Kids at home for schooling is an addition. Many of the fun
| activities being closed is a removal. There's no bar or
| restaurant to get together with friends, no club/rec level
| sports to play, etc.
|
| I agree that there are a lot of confounding variables, but
| think many were pro-efficiency rather than all being
| detrimental.
| endisneigh wrote:
| What a strange take. I disagree, I believe people in general
| will be more unproductive if there's nothing fun to do.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| Having no outlet for socializing or getting a change of
| scenery is a massively bad thing when you also suddenly find
| yourself working in your house all day for a lot of people.
| There might be some personality types that don't mind, but
| it's driving me bonkers personally.
| cybwraith wrote:
| > There's no bar or restaurant to get together with friends,
| no club/rec level sports to play, etc.
|
| Not having these kinds of things available for long periods
| of time can cause people who relied upon them for an outlet
| to become depressed, which almost always hurts productivity
| eecc wrote:
| Yeah, and however much I enjoyed the opportunity to spend
| copious amount of time with my son when the kindergartens were
| shut, it did destroy my capacity as I juggled parental
| oversight shifts with my wife...
| ivanhoe wrote:
| Absolutely, working from home is only one possible form of the
| remote work, and probably the most boring one. Working from a
| park, or a caffe, or a local hub, or some hotel anywhere in the
| world are all much nicer options, but quite impossible these
| days.
| leoc wrote:
| Children not being in school is another major difference.
| deathanatos wrote:
| This is an ad, Hacker News:
|
| > _[More sophisticated tools] can understand these aspects ' in-
| depth impact on your productivity, catching the unseen blockers
| and pain points that remote work has brought. Then, based on that
| data, you can implement changes and measure the results._
|
| ... which links to their product. The submitter/author is the co-
| founder.
|
| > _Not only have office interruptions increased; for many
| engineers, home life poses an entirely new set of challenges._
|
| It's a different set of interruptions. In the office, I have all
| the din and chaos of all of my coworkers around me, since private
| offices and cubicles have fallen out of fashion in favor of
| stuffing in as many people in as few square feet as possible.
|
| At home, well, I don't have an office there either, since when
| the average cost of a home is north of $1M in many metros1, home
| ownership is fairly out of reach, even for a SWE. No home, and no
| apartment big enough, means I also don't have a home office. I
| also didn't have a desk or chair, either; I started this pandemic
| at a couch and coffee table, and found out the rest of the world
| was too when I started shopping for desks and chairs and they
| were well out of stock.
|
| > _If an engineer in an office needed a mouse or monitor, the
| company would buy them the relevant tools._
|
| Most companies will buy tooling for, but the company; that is,
| whatever is purchased is owned by the company. I don't partake in
| this, as it's an incredible amount of e-waste.
|
| 1and in most of the data I've seen, rent:wage is high in _any_
| geo. "SWEs are paid more" is true, but it doesn't change the
| cost of a house. Put them in terms of salary years to control for
| changes over time, and it's 3-10x (depending on location) more
| expensive for me than it was for my father, who held a similar
| "highly paid" service industry job.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _and in most of the data I 've seen, rent:wage is high in any
| geo. "SWEs are paid more" is true, but it doesn't change the
| cost of a house._
|
| In other words, worker compensation has not kept up with
| increases in the cost of living, and even engineers are not
| exempt from this trend.
| anonytrary wrote:
| Easiest way to benefit from decreased value of the dollar is
| to switch companies and demand a more fair salary. This at
| least worked for me. Companies will start hiring engineers at
| a higher rate are less willing to increase compensation for
| existing engineers if they don't have to. Most people do not
| ask for what they want.
| samatman wrote:
| I've been remote for three years now, and the last couple of
| months my productivity has plummeted, this has been a problem
| company wide.
|
| It's the pandemic. Next question.
| vz8 wrote:
| Maybe I'm the outlier here, but with the pandemic came a
| significant cultural shift, reducing office politics, and it's
| been something of a productivity renaissance for my organization.
|
| Communication has downshifted to a few mandatory team and all-
| staff gatherings, one on ones with direct reports, and that's
| about it. We handle things through email and Teams for urgent
| matters. Overall, management has been light touch, trust but
| verify, and staff are given flexibility to set "project hours" to
| avoid interruptions.
|
| Frank communication about what works, what doesn't, and setting
| realistic agendas (from the meeting level up to the epic
| projects) has been very helpful.
| bengale wrote:
| A lot of the differences seem to have come down to how flexible
| an organisation is to change in general.
| philmcp wrote:
| I think offering positions on a 4 day week (e.g. 32hrs) is one
| possible solution.
|
| Developers are more burnt out than ever whilst needing less money
| to live. Remote work generally reduces living costs: no travel
| expenses, no expensive lunches, no expensive coffees etc.
|
| A 4 day week reduces burnout at a time when many developers are
| spending less. Of course, the best outcome would be 4 day roles @
| 100% salary, but often this isn't possible.
|
| I honestly believe in years to come we will look down on the 5
| day working week in the same way we currently do with 15hr
| factory shifts during the industrial revolution. It blows my mind
| that 99% of office roles are still 5 days / week, Monday to
| Friday - why is there basically no variation on this model?
|
| It annoys me so much that I've just launched
| https://www.fourdayweek.io/ (shameless plug)
| geoduck14 wrote:
| I think there are some very real cultural limitations around a
| 4 day (10 hr) work day. For one, my kids need to be picked up
| from school and they need to eat dinner.
|
| Perhaps in 18 years, when I'm an empty nester, I can revisit
| this opinion.
| philmcp wrote:
| Sorry, I wasn't talking about a compressed 5 day week. I was
| talking about 4 x 8hr days @ 80% of salary. There are many
| companies starting to offer this, some at full salary.
| kshacker wrote:
| Talking of cultural limitations and extending them to other
| examples, what if I am able to work 6 days? Can I do 7 hours
| on 5 days and 5 hours on the 6th to make up the 40? Or how
| about I work just 35 hours a week?
|
| Why would I do that? ... just saying. Maybe my family needs
| allow me to spend only 7 dedicated hours (plus commute) for
| work.
|
| I think the corporations will go crazy coordinating such
| things. Retail where this happens is quite different and
| continuity of 1-person to another may not be important there,
| but in many corporate roles, continuity is important.
| sul_tasto wrote:
| For some reason, our management is still under the impression
| that we're being paid for the amount of time we are available,
| rather than the value we produce. Our company sent us all to
| agile training 18 months ago, but our managers seem to be the
| only ones who didn't pass the cert test.
| goxygini wrote:
| You could consider coming to Switzerland. Working 32hrs/week is
| very popular there. For example jobs.ch has 7368 offers in IT
| right now and 2138 of them have the "80%" option.
| angrais wrote:
| I get it and agree that four day work week would be nice for
| mental health, potentially productivity, etc.
|
| My question to you: why 4 days? Why not 3? Why not 2? Seems as
| arbitrary as 5.
| sdesol wrote:
| > False Assumption #1: Geographic Location Doesn't Matter
|
| I can't find it, but maybe somebody from Microsoft can, but they
| (Microsoft) actually found building distance made a difference in
| productivity. This was in a research paper that I read, but for
| the life of me, I can't find it. I should also add a disclaimer
| that, this research paper was done before remote work became more
| of a norm and we had less technical options.
|
| > Night owl behavior is actually the exception, not the norm.
|
| I'm currently not tracking hours that people work with my
| developer analytics solution, but I think if would be flawed to
| just take into consideration when a pull request is authored to
| gauge behaviour.
|
| If you look at the pull request information for vscode (my goto
| project for good data points) at:
|
| https://public-001.gitsense.com/insights/github/repos?q=wind...
|
| you can see that for some pull requests, there can still be quite
| a bit of work from when a Pull request is authored to when it
| get's merged.
| mprovost wrote:
| The classic study of how distance affects communication was
| done by Thomas Allen in the 70s and results in the Allen Curve
| [0] which shows that people are four times as likely to
| communicate regularly with someone sitting six feet away as
| with someone 60 feet away, and that they almost never
| communicate with colleagues on separate floors or in separate
| buildings.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_curve
| musingsole wrote:
| I submit pull requests based around a few hours throughout the
| day my team seems most likely to be between tasks (and so
| likely to check out a PR). Such as around 11 or 2 for pre/post
| lunch ramp down/up. Point being, the time my PRs are submitted
| has no bearing on when I did the work for that PR.
|
| Using repo metadata to arrive at productivity metrics always
| strikes me as willfully bullheaded. If you timestamp my
| keystrokes, you can't know when I designed the algorithm I'm
| coding with those keystrokes. Spoiler alert: it was probably
| while I was falling asleep the night before.
| sdesol wrote:
| I wouldn't go as far as calling it "willfully bullheaded" as
| I do believe knowing when somebody creates a pull request can
| provide some data points worth mulling over. Having studied
| hundreds of popular open source projects, there does seem to
| be a pattern as to when people prefer to create a merge
| request, which is mid week.
|
| I do agree that GitPrime, GitHub Insights and other similar
| solutions are pushing developer metrics in a dangerous
| direction, by latching onto low hanging fruit metrics. I
| written a bit about what I believe is a positive direction
| and this is focusing on impact, which I talk about at
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=26457072&goto=threads%.
| ..
| lemoncucumber wrote:
| I started a new job during the pandemic, and the experience has
| been much worse than I expected. There's no opportunity to ask
| simple questions without always worrying that I'm interrupting.
| Whereas in an office it's easy to see who's on the phone or
| focusing on something and simply ask someone else (or wait).
|
| There's also no opportunity for the kind of work-related
| conversations that might happen over lunch where I'd learn more
| about the team, the org, the project, and the history of it all.
| In the past I've gotten a lot out of being present for casual
| conversations among more experienced teammates and asking the
| occasional question.
| rovr138 wrote:
| >There's no opportunity to ask simple questions without always
| worrying that I'm interrupting. Whereas in an office it's easy
| to see who's on the phone or focusing on something and simply
| ask someone else (or wait).
|
| Just ask the question on a channel or send a message to the
| person. They'll reply when they get back or can.
|
| And to the other side, if you get a message, you don't have to
| drop it all to respond immediately. We are all adults and
| professionals. I'm not going to be doing nothing waiting for
| the answer while you reply.
|
| > There's also no opportunity for the kind of work-related
| conversations that might happen over lunch where I'd learn more
| about the team, the org, the project, and the history of it
| all.
|
| This is true. We've worked out some times in the past where we
| get to expense things and everyone just chills and talks.
| People can come in and out, turn cameras on or not. It's nice
| to just talk.
|
| > I started a new job during the pandemic,
|
| I will say, it depends on the team and company. I've been
| remote for years and it varies a lot. If the company/team
| wasn't remote before, they might not have the tools or
| knowledge to make it work. That's what I'm gathering from a lot
| of friends comparing our situations.
| mrzimmerman wrote:
| I know it can seem silly, but asking people to have lunch via
| video chat is a great way to get around some of that distance.
|
| Honestly this is just leadership dropping the ball for you and
| the rest of the team (though it can be easy to miss since it's
| sort of a hidden problem). They should put more remote team
| things together like group learning sessions or just having
| coffee for 30 minutes to chat. It's not hard to get on a
| calendar and although work required socialization is usually
| eye-roll worthy it does help.
| leoedin wrote:
| I'm in the same boat, and it is definitely worse than starting
| a job in normal times.
|
| I think it's an invisible problem because the decision makers
| and influential people in the organisation were mostly around
| before lockdown, so they already know everyone - they know who
| to ask when they have a problem, they have a feeling for who is
| friendly, who can be helpful etc. So to most of the staff that
| aspect just doesn't cross their radar.
|
| It's very easy for remote work to feel much more contractual -
| you do the work needed for your team and deliver it. You lose
| the wider context - which I think makes it very hard for the
| wider team to change direction or have new ideas. The fallout
| of that inflexibility is intangible and immeasurable, but I bet
| it will come eventually.
|
| An organisation has to both be productive on a daily basis and
| choose correctly what to work on. If you don't do both, you
| fail. Working remotely broadly improves the first, but I think
| without really good systems in place it completely throws off
| the second one.
| waheoo wrote:
| You have to create a culture of safety to enable people to
| ask questions. And if you get annoyed by the repeating
| questions you need to back that up with extremely accessible
| documentation around culture and expectations.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Does your chat service not have a status? It usually can
| indicate like "in a meeting, busy, etc..." I usually make sure
| at least that they're not presenting or have busy on.
|
| There is one aspect that kind of sucks, how everything you post
| is public/persists, I'm the dunce boy oh well.
|
| The positive though is future people that have the same problem
| can search in the app and see the solution.
| spideymans wrote:
| >Does your chat service not have a status? It usually can
| indicate like "in a meeting, busy, etc..." I usually make
| sure at least that they're not presenting or have busy on.
|
| That depends on everyone being disciplined enough to keep
| their status up to date.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Yeah if it's Teams/integrated in Outlook calendar it's
| pretty good... sometimes people just set it to always busy
| ha.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| This is even more difficult if starting a new job _and_
| changing your job qualification - eg. moving from SWE to
| product manager. Making that kind of leap without being able to
| rely on a physical office environment is too difficult.
|
| This Government response to COVID, and WFH, seems to have
| frozen people's career and social status as it was at the end
| of 2019.
| wikibob wrote:
| Be the squeaky wheel. It is to your benefit.
|
| Drop the questions in a public channel.
|
| People who are confident about their skills are less worried
| about appearing to look dumb for not knowing something.
|
| Because you know you're competent at your skills, so if you
| can't figure out something, obviously it's poorly documented.
| Therefore just ask loudly.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| Completely agree. People want you to ask questions because,
| in a remote world, your visibility is via the real-time
| channels (Slack, Teams, etc).
| paranorman wrote:
| I switched jobs during the pandemic and my productivity has been
| incredible. I was doing great WFH in my last role but my current
| employer has much better support for this environment.
|
| I won't claim that any single tool is a miracle but I have found
| Clockwise combined with Google Calendar to make coordinating with
| others a breeze. The automatic status management in Slack when
| you're in "focus time" or a meeting is great for signaling to
| others whether their question is better suited for a public
| channel over DMs.
|
| For me at least, productivity when WFH comes from having a proper
| environment (noise cancelling headphones and an office are a life
| saver when your partner is watching the screaming toddler) and
| working in an organization that embraces distributed teams.
|
| Edit: If you're considering a switch to an org that does remote
| right, feel free to hit me up for a quick chat.
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